Archives for November, 2007

So, the question was, how much effect does removing the Arctic sea ice make to the rest of the world? In particular, what is the direct effect, ignoring all the feedbacks that would occur on SST and so on? Happily, an atmosphere-only GCM can answer this question, and happily I had one to hand, viz…

They’re cr*p, aren’t they? Tracy Says was the name of a band at the UK Met Office. They got their name from the quote :-). Reading the appalling stories that “Two computer discs holding the personal details of all families in the UK with a child under 16 have gone missing” I am irrestistibly reminded…

I have got complained at for responding to “The impact on the stability of the Greenland ice sheet as well as on global weather patterns would likely be nearly unimaginable” with “…as for the impact on the weather, there is no reason to suppose any problem.” This in the context of the recent loss of…

Reading the torygraph business section I came across Deutsche Bank in ownership court row: “An American judge has prevented Deutsche Bank from repossessing 14 homes because the bank could not prove it owned the defaulting mortgages involved… Pooling involves taking hundreds if not thousands of mortgages, putting them in one unit, and then selling parts…

To Belgium, for Wouters thesis; and congratulations to him. Pix are on Flickr once you get past the bonfires. Now the new line from St Pancreas is in, it takes less than 2 hours to get there, and new posters are splashed all around, some of them quite good. The one featuring Thatcher, Major and…

So the AR4 synthesis is out. You can read the SPM and cherry-pick your favourite bit. The BBC has, and has selected climate change is “unequivocal” – fair enough but boring, because we’ve had that already – and may bring “abrupt and irreversible” impacts which made me sit up and take notice.

No, not really a challenge, perhaps a rebuttal to those who think its only safe in Japan. I left my bike over friday night at Cambridge railway station, and forgot to remove the front light. When I came back… it was still there. Pathetic or what?

OK, who knows how electric car emissions compare to, say, diesel in terms of CO2/km? I mean pure battery electric, not hybrid. Obviously you have to assume some generating mix to produce the electricity, and the answer might vary for where you live: if you take France’s 70% nuclear electric then you get a different…

Over in the mad world, CIP castigates his fellow countryfolk for promoting torture. AFAIK we’re not doing that (except very quietly and discretely, one suspects) so instead we’re going for detaining people for implausibly long times. We’re currently at an insane 28 days and our glorious leader wants to extend this to a totally barking…